Dr. Don Rickert and his Research Assistants (Industrial Design Masters candidates) extensively tested his initial “almost-ready-for-production” octave violin designs with close to 100 professional and amateur Old Time, Bluegrass and Cetlic fiddlers, expert level viola players, a large number of young violinists in the Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra and violinists with the Russian Chamber Orchestra.
One prototype was based on an enlarged Chanot-type (i.e. cornerless or 'guitar-shaped) violin with arched and graduated top and back. This model appears in many of the photos of the extensive field research carried out. Another tested design was based on a modified small (14") viola and yet another on an otherwise unmodified high-quality Maggini reproduction violin set up with octave strings.
The octave-strung small viola lacked the projection power that most evaluators sought; however, players interested in a quieter instrument or who intended to use a pickup loved this model owing to its easy playability…a 14” viola is essentially a violin with a heavier bass bar and larger-diameter sound post.
The Chanot-based design did quite well and may, in fact, be produced in the future, as did the Maggini copy (note: Maggini’s have a larger body than what has become a “standard” violin and have a long history of being re-strung as small violas and reportedly even as octave instruments).
At a certain point in his research, Dr. Rickert re-discovered an obscure invention, which he had looked at several years earlier, for which a U.S. Patent was granted to the artist, fiddler and inventor, William Sidney Mount, in 1852. It was the so-called “Cradle of Harmony”, a trapezoid-shaped fiddle with a flat top plate bent to be convex and the back plate bent to be concave. Subsequently, Mount designed and built himself several “guitar-shaped” versions, which had the convex top and concave back as well.
By all accounts, one of the reasons Mount’s instruments did not succeed in the mid-19th Century marketplace was that they were too loud for contemporary orchestral use. This sounded like a good design to improve upon in the design of an acoustic octave violin, where the chief limitation has always been volume and power.
A quick mockup of Mount’s “Cradle of Harmony” from his patent drawings revealed that these instruments were indeed astoundingly loud and powerful. Mount’s bent flat top and back plates produce an extremely stiff instrument with much thinner wood than a traditional violin. This observation accords with recent research on violin acoustics. It has been said that if Stradivari, quite an innovator himself, were living today, his instruments would have flat tops and backs.
The next step towards the ultimate octave violin was to make it bigger and to modernize the internal structure. The changes in the internal structure are described in another posting.
The images shown below are of the actual working prototype used for design research and user field testing with over 100 evaluators. The images shown are the final form of the test instrument, which was dissembled (different bassbar designs, rib heights, neck angles, etc.) and put back together a number of times by Dr. Rickert.
Click on any of the thumbnails for a full-size view.
This prototype became the basic model for the Rickert & Ringholz™/Fiddarci Lutherie™ Type II Octave Violin, to which the signature “scroll-less” neck, unique purfling and other lutherie magic were added by Shep Jones of Fiddarci Lutherie™.
Several images of the Type II Octave Violin™ are shown below.
Click on any of the thumbnails for a full-size view.
Additional design research in accord with a philosophy of continuous innovation, which continued after the Type II Octave Violin™ went into production revealed a group of players looking for a somewhat darker and complex (i.e. noticeable harmonic overtones) sound, which led to development of the Cradle of Harmony Octave Violin™, which utilizes sound holes patterned after the historic and enigmatic reverse f-holes used on William Sidney Mount’s instruments. The larger aperture size of the reverse f-holes rather than the shape probably has more to do with producing the darker timbre; however, one can never be certain about such matters.
In any case, there now exist two models of octave violin that are identical except for their soundhole design. Photos of the Cradle of Harmony Octave Violin™ appear below:
Click on any of the thumbnails for a full-size view.
Shep Jones of Fiddarci Lutherie™ has produced yet a 3rd model of hollow-back octave violin designed to produce extremely high projection volume (it’s VERY LOUD!), a result of continued experimentation by Shep Jones of Fiddarci Lutherie™ on the interactions of tone woods, graduation patterns, bassbar design and soundpost dimensions. This instrument may go into regular production after extensive testing of its structural integrity over time.
